The Croatia Rally, the fourth round of the 2024 WRC, restarted this afternoon with Special Stage 5, the 16.63 kilometer Platak 2, and the snow made it even more treacherous than it already was.
More or less sparse ice flakes began to fall a few minutes after the world championship leader Thierry Neuville entered the test, first on stage and first at the end with the best time achieved in 8'47″4, a tenth faster than what was done in this morning's passage.
For the Belgian from Hyundai Motorsport it was the fourth special stage victory out of the 5 held so far, beating his first rival for success this weekend and in the Drivers' World Championship, Elfyn Evans, by 1″5.
The Welshman of Toyota Gazoo Racing, like Neuville, did not experience many difficulties caused by the snow that fell from mid-stage onwards, but those who followed them certainly struggled more.
Neuville and Evans, despite entering the test on Hard tires (4 for the Belgian, 3 plus a soft for the Welshman) had no problems whatsoever, while the others all suffered considerable gaps given that the test was not that long after all.
Everyone except the usual Sébastien Ogier. The 8-time world champion continues to show noteworthy competitiveness despite starting so late in the special stage, so much so that he finished third on SS5, 5″4 behind Neuville. This keeps him firmly in third place in the general classification, but without any possibility of catching up towards those before him.
Now Neuville has a margin of 10 seconds clear on Evans and 26″9 on Ogier. Ott Tanak, fourth, is 48 seconds behind and is in full battle with Adrien Fourmaux to try to maintain his position at the foot of the podium. The Frenchman of M-Sport, doing better in SS5 by a few tenths, he moved to 3.9 seconds behind him.
For the first time in the day, Andreas Mikkelsen did better than Takamoto Katsuta in the fight for sixth place, but the Norwegian from Hyundai continues to have a delay of just over 25 seconds against the Japanese from Toyota Gazoo Racing.
Like the WRC, the WRC2 also continues to follow the lines of what we saw in the morning with Nikolay Gryazin in the lead and followed by teammate Yohan Rossel. The two Frenchmen, at the wheel of the same Citroen C3 Rally2, lead Gus Greensmith and the first Skoda Fabia RS Rally2.
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